


Like a Ghost

by AtwoJay (EstherA2J)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Forever (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Assassination, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Killing, Memories, Memory Loss, Mental Instability, No Plot/Plotless, Past Brainwashing, Shooting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-01 12:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5205245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EstherA2J/pseuds/AtwoJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been twenty-three years. Henry never thought he would see him again. To tell the truth, he'd hoped never to see him again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Ghost

2014

Henry lifted his head toward the flash that had caught his eye, squinting against the thin, clear morning sunlight. Reflecting off metal, the light hit his eyes more strongly than he was used to in  New York winter. His heart nearly stopped when he recognized the metal surface of the arm, the faded red star on the shoulder. It couldn’t be the same man—could it?

Shading his eyes with a hand, Henry peered into the alleyway, but whoever it was, he was gone. Henry turned to go, trying to put it out of his head.

1991

The gunshot reverberated in the quiet forest, ringing in Henry’s ears and sending him throwing himself flat into the underbrush with his arms over his head. Bracing himself for another shot, and turning his head slightly, he peered under his arm through the scattered leaves and twigs. A hint of frost bit at his nose. But there was no second shot, the first one having found its target, blowing out a tire on a luxury car passing by on the nearby mountain road.

Pushing himself to his feet, Henry was already running as the car spun out, fishtailing wildly as the driver tried to regain control. It was hopeless: the car was moving at a speed that was unsafe at the best of times, and now it spiraled off the edge of a hairpin turn and into a large tree with a sickening crunch.

When Henry reached the car, his heart sank. The woman in the passenger seat was not moving and, when he got close enough, he could see that a branch had gone through the windshield and directly through her body, pinning her to the seat, and likely killing her instantly. A groan from the the driver’s seat sent Henry running around the car. He laid a hand gently on the man’s shoulder, his eyes scanning what he could see of his injuries. “Don’t move. You’ve been in an accident.”

Not an accident though. This was deliberate. Someone had shot that gun, purposely sending this car off the road. This was murder.

“Maria?” the man asked, his voice tight and sharp with pain. He lifted his head, his eyes trying to focus through a sheet of blood from an ugly head wound. Aside from bruising, the head wound was the only injury Henry could see.

Working fast, Henry pulled his shirt off and tore strips of cloth from it. “What’s your name?” He pushed back the man’s blood-soaked hair and pressed a wad of cloth against the wound, pressing firmly.

“Howard. I’m Howard. Please… is my wife… Maria—?” The words broke off on a fit of coughing. There was more blood now, and Henry let out a soft breath at the sight. Howard was coughing up blood, which meant internal injuries. Without access to a nearby hospital, there was little Henry could do but try to make him comfortable.

“I’m sorry, Howard.” Henry swallowed hard. He hated times like this, when he could do nothing.

Howard’s eyes met Henry’s, and Henry knew that he already knew. Howard lifted a hand, gripping Henry’s with surprising strength. “Please… tell my son—tell Tony…” His voice trailed off and his grip went lax.

Henry watched as the light went out in Howard’s eyes and then he rested his forehead against the edge of the car door, closing his eyes. He was so tired of watching people die.

The sound of a gun being cocked behind him brought his head up again. He sighed and slowly turned around. He had not forgotten the shooter in the trees, just pushed that knowledge aside for the more urgent need to help the people in the car.

A man stood before him, wrapped head to toe in leather armour but for his left arm, which was made up of overlapping plates of silvery metal. He peered down the barrel of a rifle that was trained on Henry, his eyes as cold as a winter wind.

Henry slowly rose to his feet. This wasn’t his first time as a witness to a murder, and also wasn’t the first time the killer had come after him as a witness. He never liked to face death any way other than standing if he could help it. “I guess you’ll have to shoot me now?”

The shooter appeared to be considering the question, the coldness in his eyes fading into thoughtfulness, but then he shook his head, his shaggy hair falling about his face. “No. You are not the mission. You can leave.”

2014

“Henry!” Abraham’s voice floated down the stairs from the antique shop, sharp with excitement. “Henry!”

Looking up, Henry smiled as his son came down into the lab, skipping some of the stairs in his haste, waving a sheet of glossy paper in one hand. “Careful, Abraham. A fall at your age could be quite dangerous.”

Rolling his eyes, Abraham hopped off the last step and came over to slap the paper down before Henry. “We can’t all be eternally young and invincible, Dad. Look at this!” He stabbed a finger at the paper, nearly vibrating with excitement.

A fond smile curving his lips, Henry followed Abraham’s directive. Bright blue block letters across the top proclaimed: “Welcome Back, Cap!” The centre of the page was dominated by a photo of a man in a gaudy red, white, & blue uniform. Henry’s smile widened and he shook his head. Abraham had worn a smaller version of that outfit for Halloween five years running, had listened to every episode of the Captain America radio show, and had read every Agent Carter paperback until his copies were falling apart.

At the bottom of the page, red text proclaimed: “Captain America: The Living Legend and Symbol of Courage. At the Smithsonian.”

“You want to go, Abraham?” Henry met Abraham’s eyes, smiling again at the eagerness there. It didn’t matter how many wrinkles Abraham had, how grey his hair got; when Henry looked into those eyes, he only ever saw the little boy he had been, the little boy he would always be to Henry.

“Of course I want to go.” Abraham’s voice and face said that Henry would be a fool to think anything else. “They’re saying he’s back, you know. He survived the plane crash and they dug him out of the ice. Can you imagine? Seventy years in the ice?” He put his hand on Henry’s arm, his eyes widening. “Hey, do you think he’s like you?”

Henry could imagine it, actually. He had been unlucky enough to die in the middle of winter before, and waking up in the river in the cold was just awful. He had worried that he might die of the cold, waking up only to die again and again. It was a nightmare.

Henry had always assumed the stories of Captain America were mostly fiction, probably based on a real person, the Steve Rogers of Abraham’s stories, but he had likely never done half of the things attributed to him. But if he really had survived seventy years trapped in ice, then maybe… “If he really is still alive.” Or, alive again.

“Well, let’s go find out.” Abraham slapped Henry’s arm, grinning. “Maybe he’ll be there.”

“At his own exhibit?” Henry shook his head, bemused. “That would be quite self-aggrandizing, wouldn’t it?”

Abraham shrugged. “I’d go if it was me.”

*

“Best friends since childhood,” the recorded voice intoned, “Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country.” Henry stood before the larger-than-life photograph of James Buchanan Barnes, and he was once again in that forest so many years ago, looking into the eyes of the man who had just killed two people right in front of him. The hair in the picture was shorter, the cheeks plumper, but it was definitely the same face. How—?

The text on the exhibit said that Bucky Barnes had died in 1945 during the war, lost in action, forty-six years before that deadly car crash. If he had survived, he would have been so much older in that forest, but that man’s face had been unlined, young. Maybe the assassin in the forest was a relative, a descendant. If it was the same man, then he had to be immortal too.

Tearing himself away from the memories and musings, Henry turned to go see where Abraham had gotten off to. He stopped as his gaze landed on a man staring at the exhibit in much the way Henry had just been doing. A ball cap was pulled low over his eyes as if to hide his face, but he had forgotten to keep his head low, gazing at the pictures of Bucky Barnes as if transfixed. The face under the ball cap was the face on the wall, the face from the forest.

As if he realized he was being watched, the man turned and those incredibly familiar eyes met Henry’s. There was a long moment where it felt like the world had taken a breath and forgotten to let it out. Then Bucky, if it was him, turned and was gone, vanished like a ghost, and Henry could breathe again.

2016

“Steve, who is this?” Bucky tossed a folded newspaper on the kitchen table, metal finger stabbing at the page.

“Hm?” On his way to the coffeemaker for a refill, Steve leaned over and took a look at the picture of a dark-haired man in a long coat with a scarf wrapped around his neck. He was half-turned away from the camera, as if uncomfortable with being photographed, and his smile said he wished he was anywhere but where he was. “I dunno. What’s the story say?”

Snatching the paper up, Bucky snapped the pages sharply together. “‘Medical Examiner Dr. Henry Morgan found the evidence that put away the killer’—that’s all they say about him!” He tossed the paper on the table, sending pages fluttering onto the floor. Tossing himself into a chair, he rubbed his flesh hand over his face with a frustrated groan. “Why can’t I remember?”

“Hey.” Abandoning his coffee on the counter, Steve came over and dropped a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Remember what the doctor said: Don’t rush it. You’ve made so much progress already.”

“I know.” Bucky raised his eyes to meet Steve’s. “But, Steve, it doesn’t make any sense.” He waved his hand toward the scattered pages. “I know I’ve seen him before—I have this image in my head...” He pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead. “I’m in a forest and I just—I just completed a mission, and… he’s there.”

Steve tightened his grip on Bucky’s shoulder. He hated that Bucky had to remember his missions from when he was the Winter Soldier, but when the memories came back, they had to take the bad with the good.

“Steve, I’m not going crazy, am I?” Bucky’s eyes held Steve’s, begging for reassurance.

Steve sat down next to Bucky, leaning forward to keep his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “What? Of course not! Why would you think that?”

Dropping his gaze, Bucky studied his hands where they lay on the table, the metal one glinting in the light from the kitchen window. “People are supposed to change, to age. I don’t remember which mission it was when I saw him, but it feels like a long time ago… and he hasn’t changed.” Leaning forward, he grabbed the page with the photo of Dr. Henry Morgan and pulled it toward him. “He looks exactly the same.”

“We haven’t aged,” Steve pointed out quietly.

Bucky’s laugh was short and humourless. “We’re not exactly ‘normal’, Steve.”

Steve took a breath and nodded slowly. “‘Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine’.”

“What?” Bucky raised his head, a line between his brows.

With a bit of laugh, Steve shook his head. “Just something I heard somewhere. But, maybe he’s not ‘normal’ either. There seems to be a lot of that going around these days.”

Letting out a breath, Bucky leaned back in his chair. “Yeah.” He grimaced. “I just feel like it’s—like maybe it’s important. Or related to something important.” He snorted in disgust. “But what do I know?”

“Hey.” Steve leaned forward to look Bucky in the eye. “If you think it’s important then it’s probably important.”

“Yeah.” Bucky snorted a laugh. “Just yesterday, I remembered a dead rat that was in my cell. Not everything is important, Steve.”

“You’re important, Buck.” Steve squeezed Bucky’s arm.

“Shut up.” Bucky punched Steve’s shoulder. “You gigantic sap.”

 

 


End file.
